


Taffy Pull

by Warp5Complex_Archivist



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-13
Updated: 2006-03-13
Packaged: 2018-08-16 05:24:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8088868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warp5Complex_Archivist/pseuds/Warp5Complex_Archivist
Summary: It's May, 1969, and it's twenty klicks south of the North Vietnamese border, the DMZ, inside Leatherneck Square. (01/02/2004)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Kylie Lee, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Warp 5 Complex](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Warp_5_Complex), the software of which ceased to be maintained and created a security hazard. To make future maintenance and archive growth easier, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but I may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Warp 5 Complex collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Warp5Complex).

  
Author's notes: Alternate Universe. Very.  


* * *

Once we got over the little bump in the ground, we broke out of the brush and into Purgatory. That's what it looked like. The entrance to hell.

Battalion halted as Archer did a binocular search of Do Lan Forest. Or what was a forest according to our wonderfully fucking inaccurate maps. Maybe last week it had been a forest. Another fucking triple-canopy green nightmare. Now it was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

"Don't you wish now that Johnson had won?" I turned my head slightly, eyeballing what I supposed I should term my girlfriend. My neck was chafing again, so I kept my towel rolled over my collar and tried not to move my head too much.

I guess she'd be my girlfriend if we ever got out of this horseshit and we had a little in-country R&R. We've finger-fucked each other half a dozen times, but I've yet to stick my tongue in that wonderfully rank crotch of hers. I know it's rank because we're all rank after ten days in the brush.

"Tepol, doll," I said in a low voice, "it was just a campaign promise, and we all know about politican's promises."

"Yeah," the big breasted girl said, "but I for one wish Goldwater had been stomped on. Maybe Johnson would have kept the women home. This woman in particular."

We carefully eyed the terrain in front, not liking the prospect of another fucking exciting adventure in Gook-land. First came by and stopped to jaw us up. Tucker was a lifer, but not an asshole like the fat-bellied ones back at Da Nang.

"Keep your spacing, guys, and remember the wires. Kopasetic?"

"Gee, and here I was trying to forget the fucking wires, Sarge." He glared at me but decided to take it as a joke.

"You ladies should also remember to take your Mickey Mouse's off safety too. And if you decide to throw one of those metal stones at Mister Charles, it's called a lemon grenade and I especially want you to remember to pull the pin first. Got it? Good." Then he moved to the next one in my fire team.

"I'm short," I prayed my mantra automatically. Tepol smiled bitterly. Her tour was going to last thirty days after mine. She also knew I had five months to go yet on my thirteen, so I wasn't really short yet. But I needed to think, somehow, that I was going to get out of Veet-nam alive. My mantra was a confirmation of my belief in the hereafter. Some day this skinny Nisei bitch was going to make it back to Los Angeles and Little Tokyo. Where I'm going to eat six plates of Tempura, get roaring drunk, eat fresh bean cake and then eat my babe when she shows up at my family home.

They shouldn't put big busted Polak women in the Infantry. Those issue bras leave bleeding scars on the shoulders and back. What the fuck ever prompted Lincoln to draft women in the Army anyways? I know, I remember from history class, Davis did it first, blah, blah.

Politicans. Now it's time for me to do my job.

Tepol managed to squeeze my hand for a second and then we went into the portals of Hell.

They'd given Leatherneck Square lots and lots of Agent Orange, and Agent White, and every goddamned agent they could come up with. As we got closer the smells got worse.

This had once been thick jungle. Now it was a terrible fairyland. I could smell cyanide too, so I knew they'd used Agent Blue on the area. All the defoliant chemicals had killed the forest. I'd watched the 123's dumping that crap around Camp Carroll and we made snowballs out of the shitty snow and threw them at each other. Anything that made life harder for Charlie we enjoyed.

The next step was the B-52's and the napalm.

Napalm is a mixture like our perimeter Foo bombs. Fill a 55-gallon drum a third full of gasoline. A half full of diesel. Then the Air Force fills it up with millions of tiny white plastic pellets. When the pellets melted on ignition, they clung to everything they touched. We used ordinary laundry detergent in the emplaced perimeter Foo bombs.. It clung to everything just as good.

Now we were in Fairyland. Loops like dirty salt-water taffy were strung from tree to tree, and dull waves of it were everywhere. You had to be careful around it, because it'd break and leave this goddamned sharp edge or spear. That'd be all we needed. Get cut, jungle rot set in, and you lose an arm or leg or something.

But it had a hideous beauty. A forest covered with soft-looking loops and puddles and coatings and draped over the still stiff and standing carbonized remains of bushes and elephant grass.

It had a sickening fascination, because no vista was like the other. Lines of dirty taffy ran from a tree branch to the ground, or across a path, or circling the crowns of trees like Christmas lights that hadn't been plugged in yet.

The presents we looked for under the trees, though, were trip wires for claymore mines and grenades and anything Mister Charles could do damage with.

We didn't think they'd set up booby traps here, not yet. The taffy was unbroken before us. But we still looked.

I also realized my bladder was getting full. I could do it in my pants, but I always got another case of rot on my thighs when I did so. To make it worse I got another problem.

I kept thinking of a taffy pull machine I'd seen on the pier at Santa Monica, and how great the fresh taffy was. I was getting hungry for good fresh taffy.

The nearest taffy was probably in Manila. Maybe. That or Honolulu.

Damndamndamndamn!


End file.
